A beautifully done map shows how the Internet traverses the open ocean.

TeleGeography released a 2013 version of its Submarine Cable Map on Thursday showing the 232 cables that ferry telecommunications under water between countries. The mapmakers note that the number of cables do not denote capacity, but present an interesting visual of otherwise unseen connections around the world.

In addition to mapping the locations of the cables, the map shows a chart detailing the names and connectivity of all the cables installed between 1997 and 2012. For instance, the Challenger-Bermuda 1, built by Alcatel-Lucent in 2008, connects the US to Bermuda and had an initial capacity of 20 Gigabits per second, scalable to 320 Gigabits per second. The Unity/EAC-Pacific cable, lit in 2010 and funded in part by Google, connects the US and Japan (and cost around $300 million to build, according to Wired).

In addition to the two larger charts, the map also includes insets that show network latency between countries over their undersea cables. Worst connections: Japan to the UK, the US to South Africa, Brazil to almost everywhere. A second inset shows rough estimations of how heavy transmissions are between countries with the thickness of lines: transatlantic communications are unsurprisingly heavy. Cables from India to Africa also handle a significant amount of traffic.

Twelve more of the cables shown on the map are set to be strung between landmasses during the coming year. Two cables on the docket: Port Vila to Fiji, and Fiji to Tonga. The lower chart shows that cables from Europe to sub-Saharan Africa are also on the rise.

Seems like a useful map for potential saboteurs who might wish to disrupt the world's communications network.

The writer of the book "Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet" went through a similar dilemma in writing his book, but ultimately came to the conclusion that the data is already very public. Because it is.

Seems like a useful map for potential saboteurs who might wish to disrupt the world's communications network.

This map would be useless, seeing as the cables are not placed in a geographically correct location, it simply shows the connections between places.

Additionally, it's all rather public information anyway. Anyone who wanted to know could easily find out what's in this map.

Pretty much.

When US Navy realized that the major Soviet base at the southern tip of Kamchatka peninsula was probably connected to the mainland through an undersea cable, rather than running a cable all the way up the peninsula and then back down, they sent a submarine to get close to their shore, get up to periscope depth and look for the following sign on the shore: Caution Buried Cable.

I'm curious if it really costs more to run 100 gbps link than a 10 gbps. Surely the major cost is having a ship and crew out installing it. If you can get them to put down 10 fibers at a time rather than one seems like it would be more cost effective.

I'm curious if it really costs more to run 100 gbps link than a 10 gbps. Surely the major cost is having a ship and crew out installing it. If you can get them to put down 10 fibers at a time rather than one seems like it would be more cost effective.

I'm curious if it really costs more to run 100 gbps link than a 10 gbps. Surely the major cost is having a ship and crew out installing it. If you can get them to put down 10 fibers at a time rather than one seems like it would be more cost effective.

The projection was designed for marine navigation and has served its purpose well for close on to 450 years.

TeleGeography:

"The design of our new map was inspired by antique maps and star charts, and alludes to the historic connection between submarine cables and cartography.

We drew inspiration from a number of sources including Maury’s New Complete Geography (Revised Edition) published by American Book Company in 1921 and The Timechart History of the World, a collection of antique timelines published by Third Millennium Press."

All I could think while reading this is: "I want that on my wall".$250 tho? That hurts.

Yep, similar feeling. I've been mousing around the online version for the last half an hour, pondering the crazy notion that I could maybe screencap it and print it out myself. Of course with inkjet printer ink costing more than vintage champagne it's cheaper to buy the real thing.

It really is quite beautiful though, so I might just have to wait until their 2014 edition and see if I can pick this edition up cheap

Beautiful map. It's a pity the price is so high. That's a pretty good size they're offering, but it's out of my reach. $50 to $100 and it would be an impulse buy. But they probably know their target audiences. The Telecoms I've worked for would happily buy several of these for their capacity planners and VPs.

I have to agree with those that love the mix of old style with current info.

I also was impressed with the rainbow of cables going through Egypt. 20 on the latency scale is impressive. It is interesting that most of her neighbors were a couple hundred points higher and some were close to breaking 1000. I also thought it was odd to see no cables going from US/Canada to Russia.

What about Russia, no cables? Only one cable from america to africa, what's the deal?

What's the question?

Russia isn't an island. The population centers of Russia are right over the border from major European nations, so they've got land-lines, not under-sea links. You do recall this is a map of submarine cables-only, not a chart of all internet links, right? There's Vladivostok on the eastern seaboard, but they're an isolated population, so a few short links from Japan is easily sufficient.

Africa is indeed very light on internet uplinks in general, with a poor population not making such infrastructure particularly profitable. They don't need to spend the money on direct links to the US, as they are probably more interested in European servers than US ones in general, and severing the direct links only means higher latency, not unreachability.

Beautiful map. As others have said, at $50 I'd buy it right now, maybe even get one for my brother. At $250, no way - what, is each one hand-drawn? I have to assume it is priced that high because they don't expect to sell very many and so have a tiny production run, but it's a pity they can't lower the price. And a 50% discount on a 2012 map still isn't that tempting.

You see that one lousy cable between Western Australia and Indonesia? Yeah. Fishing boat magnet.

And no, the internet does not do a good job of "routing around problems".

If the cable is cleanly severed (100% packet loss), routing protocols should pick it up pretty quickly; but there may not be enough excess capacity in the links from Eastern Australia (or within Australia) to handle the extra traffic. Some ISPs may not have access to links on both sides of the country due to economic reasons (from what I understand, Telestra can be anti-competitive).

All this is pointless if the providers will stick to ancient models of charging, controlling, throttling the unlimited form of networking over these international lines. One day we will soon connect using free multi giga connections as with the oxygen around us, one day...